


A Drop

by breakfastforbeginners



Category: Indian Summers (TV)
Genre: Adultery, Emotional Abuse, F/M, Gaslighting, Oral Sex, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 04:11:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7251565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breakfastforbeginners/pseuds/breakfastforbeginners
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's never one thing. Violence can take many forms and in her marriage it's wearing her down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Drop

 

_It makes the ocean, seem like a drop in the ocean_

Paul Dempsey // _The True Sea_

 

“We need to have a little talk.”

There is a dread in the pit of her stomach that this, this will be the time. Every time she raises her chin, smirks at him, embarrasses him in front of perfect strangers. His jaw tightens and those big brown eyes that once she thought beautiful, burn with rage. Will this be the time?

It’s not like he was violent before, not exactly, and honestly Alice isn’t sure that the expectation that he will be is anything due to Charlie’s behaviour at all. She pictures Ralph in the back of her mind, hair dripping with pomade and sweat, open stance, clenched fist… all the things she never remembers their father being. Her husband shares his dark looks and it’s enough to trick her into thinking they are cut from the same refined, bloody cloth.

Percy is playing on the rocking horse Ralph restored on the lawn, Sumitra has one hand on his back and she makes every effort not to meet Alice’s eyes as she is dragged up the stairs from the kitchen.

“Hurry up, Muddle.” Charlie’s grip doesn’t hurt but it’s tight enough that she trips a little on the stairs and he gives her a pointed look and a small chuckle that brings a flush of anger to her cheeks. She hasn’t had any liquor today, hasn’t for two days, and before that it was a glass of wine at dinner. She knows this game.

Bhupinder is at the top of the stairs and the pair of them stop short. Charlie steps closely into the man’s space. “Nothing to see here, _Bhupi_ ,” He spits the name and Bhupinder blinks, trying not to recoil at the spittle, looking at his feet when he accidentally meets Alice’s tired eyes.

“Run along,” Charlie’s voice is loud and his breath reeks of whiskey. _Muddle_ , the word runs through her head as Bhupi hurries down the stairs behind them and Charlie shoves her into their bedroom.

 

 

 

It’s a _conversation_ they’ve had before. Charlie locks them in and orders her around the room, _bend, kneel, sit, don’t cross your arms_ , until she kisses him gently and slides her hands into his trousers. This time, she asks to make him happy and this time she’s praying it will work. “I know it could be like before.” And it’s the dread, the dread that something more will happen. Something else will come.

She puts her lips to his cock, cold hands splayed across the narrow frame of his hips and wonders if this will mean anything in the end. Is she buying more time or sealing her fate? Charlie remains very still but she can hear him breathing heavily through his nose. She won’t chance a look up, choosing instead to stare at his navel, the pale skin flecked with dark, trailing hair that peaks through the folds of his linen shirt. His vest has ridden up somewhere between kissing her and Alice begging to try it on her knees.

“Is this what you want?” She asks softly, and without waiting for an answer she takes him in her mouth, lips barely covering her teeth. _It is isn’t it?_ She makes fists in the tails of his shirt. They’re by the bed and Charlie is gripping the nightstand with one hand, as white-knuckled as her own. It rattles with every dip of her head.

Alice hears a hissing breath and a moment later Charlie’s hands are in her hair. “Rather crispy,” He comments. He made her put a pence-worth of pomade in it before he closed the jar of the lid that morning. Alice closes her eyes and thinks of England. Green fields, crisp cricket whites, lemonade served with the ice tinkling in tall glasses.

“Oh, muddle, look what you’ve done.” Her head jerks up to see Charlie with his hands spread in a false catch. Shattered glass lies around them both and the water that was in the vase he’s dropped starts to sink into her skirt. Marigolds lie face-down like a poor halo around her knees and he stares at her, mouth agape.

“Well, we are clumsy today.” He says in that voice that addresses her as though she is their son. His cock lies flaccid against his trousers but he draws a thumb across her bottom lip, staring at her mouth like it holds all the answers to their marriage.

Alice tucks him away, slowly buttoning his grey suit pants with steady hands, patting down his shirt now soaked through with sweat. She can see straight through to the matching white vest he wears beneath. Charlie catches her hands in his and brings her from her knees to stand before him.

“I can’t blame you for trying,” Charlie says, and she can’t tell if it’s sincere or not, especially when he drags the back of his finger down the side of her face, stopping to pull a lock of her hair around it. The way Ralph does. The way he’s seen Ralph do a hundred times.

“Do you think your brother will ask me today?” He says. The change in topic is to throw her off balance, and its subject meant to fill her with guilt. His eyes are unfocused and she wonders how many whiskeys he had in the kitchen alone before she came in.

He means the money, of course.

“Maybe you should ask him,” Alice steps away from him and he releases her hair. They are a sorry pair, she thinks, taking in the broken vase (one of her mother’s, mother’s vases from Sussex), Charlie’s sweat and the slight tremble in her knees. She just feels so tired.

“We should go down.”

Charlie nods to himself, his hands on his hips as he stares down at the mess too.

“Very good. Get dear old Ralph’s man to clean this up, would you?” Her hand is on the door but he remains still. “No doubt he’s still on the landing waiting to bump into us again.” Charlie tosses her the key with one hand and she watches him gaze out the window on the opposite wall above their bed.

“I need a moment.”

She doesn’t need telling twice. Alice unlocks the door and rushes down to find her son, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

 

 

 

It’s something like an hour later before she sees Charlie slink down the stairs and into the sitting room. Sumitra stands quickly, vacating the seat next to Alice and heading out the ever-open back doors to find Alice’s son and niece’s toys.

“Everyone behaving themselves?” Charlie asks, but his eyes are on Alice.

Madeleine smirks, and Alice knows it’s because she never knows what to say to Charlie Havistock. There aren’t many who do anymore.

“Enjoy your nap?” She asks in that smooth American voice. Charlie pauses on his way over to the piano. Two steps later he’s glibly running his fingers over the keys playing the opening to ‘Love in Bloom’.

Alice colours at the memory it stirs of their wedding night; his banjolele and smooth voice after a long night abed. She’d bled so much that night and nobody had told her that would happen. She had no one to tell her. Alice watches Madeleine move across the room to the drinks stand, her gaze flicking between Vivian on the floor and Percy walking over to Charlie. She still has no one.

He plays the same riff over again and it’s a perfect mockery of one of the few good memories she has left of them. He won’t look at her, watching the keys beneath his fingers and he _knows_.

She takes a sip of the whiskey Madeleine pours them each before quickly thinking better of it and leaving it on the stand beside the sofa.

“I need a little fresh air.” Alice awaits the immediate reply her husband directs to Madeleine before stepping out onto the patio, the words fading behind her.

“ _Yes, I dare say she does. Whiskey at this hour, in this heat? Mummy’s a fuzzy-headed muddle, isn’t she?_ ”

She leaves the back step to Sumitra who watches her with big, silent eyes and makes her way around the side of the house. Alice heads for the alley. If she can get her way up there she can pretend there’s no one inside. She can pretend she’s five and her parents are sitting in the dining room and her brother is playing with Bhupi on the lawn.

Alice rounds the side of the house and kicks off her yellow shoes – another present from Ralph after she tore the heel off her last red pair in Bombay. To match the yellow dress he bought her when she first came back to India so he said. The ground is warm beneath her bare feet and the gravel bites into the soft skin of her soles as she traces the wall with one idle hand.

Up the stairs she climbs until she finds herself in the lane, alone. Just a quick run down to the main street and she’ll come right back, Alice tells herself. A quick little run and the feeling of lead in her arms and legs, and the wax-covered cotton in her head will be blown right out.

So she runs. She lifts the edge of her yellow skirt with her right hand and takes off, full pelt down the alley, gravel scattering under her gait. The screech of monkeys in the trees fill her ears. The buzz of insects and hum of distant motorcars and squeaky rickshaws soon become background noise to the sound of her heart thumping in her ears and for once, just for a moment, Alice can hear just how alive she is, right there with every beat.

Seconds later she rounds the first bend and nearly bowls Aafrin over.

“Miss Whelan!” He exclaims and it must be a reflex to reach out for her because she sees him immediately pull away as soon as he makes the motion. “Mrs Havistock,” Aafrin corrects himself and she frowns so deeply she thinks of her mother telling her when she was six, ‘ _your face will freeze that way’_ and it’s just for a moment but it makes her smile brilliantly.

“Mr. Dalal.”

“Is everything- you look- are you well?” She must look mad. A grown woman running down the lane. His eyes move up and down her body, stopping on her bare feet, flushed face, and heaving chest as she tries to recover her breath.

Alice flushes even more. “Quite.”

There’s a pause, and he must know she’s not saying more and it couldn’t be more awkward. She watches him swallow quickly. His eyes move to the house down the lane and he jerks his chin towards it.

“I’m looking for –“

“My brother?” And she shouldn’t be surprised but she bites her cheek anyway.

Aafrin nods, one of those half-embarrassed, sharp nods that she’s seen him give Ralph so often. Never her. Not anymore. His gaze is cold when he looks back at her for an answer, a reason, something for her state, or her brother’s request, she doesn’t know. It’s impossible to read him now, and she feels that dread swell up again. The same dread she felt at the club. The same dread she feels when Charlie catches her crying alone.

“ _I have another life, now_.” The words ring through her head like the smashing glass of that damn broken vase and she looks down at her hands, her wedding ring glittering in the afternoon sun.

“Ralph isn’t here.”

When she looks up again his face is still the same cold stone it ever was. She wonders how she ever saw warmth in his eyes before this. He nods once and then sweeps back down the alley, perfect hair and perfect suit dappled with light and shade as he passes under the overhanging branches. She can barely recall a time when his suits were out-of-fashion and his hair was too short for pomade.

Her heart is in her throat and Alice almost calls after him. But it’s Charlie’s voice that fills the empty space between her lips and Aafrin’s retreating form.

“Muddle! Hurry down, supper’s ready. Percy will think you’ve gone and fallen down a well.” The strained laughter that follows belies his words entirely and that she supposes is the point.

Alice looks down, over her shoulder and he’s standing beside the house, his shirt still sodden with sweat, his lips tight with barely-held curiosity, and not a little fury too.

“I’m coming,” She calls back and stares down at her bare feet. A mosquito sits on one toe, sucking the blood from her lazily until it flies off, joining the two others she can now see hovering around her head.

With one look back at the dark suit disappearing onto the road, Alice squares her shoulders and walks steadily back to the house, feeling the sweat cool as it drips down the back of her neck. Hot gravel bites her feet once more with every step and she can taste old whiskey drying on her lips.

She isn’t hungry at all.


End file.
